EL REY CLUB: RESORT, CASINO, BROTHEL

SEARCHLIGHT, NEVADA

"Hui-k'o, the Second Patriarch of Zen passed on the bowl and robe to his successor, the Third Patriarch, Seng-ts'an, signifying the Transmission of the Dharma. Hui-k'o, who had received the seal of approval from Bodhidharma himself, then went everywhere drinking and carousing around like a wildman and partaking in the offerings of the brothel districts. When people asked how he could do such a thing, being a Patriarch of the Zen school and all, he would respond with: 'What business is it of yours?'"

I used to have a pet parakeet that couldn't have weighed two ounces. If you were dumb enough to stick your finger in his cage you took your life in your own hands because given the chance he could tear your finger apart like he was an 800 pound gorilla. That was what the El Rey Resort and Casino was like. It may have looked like it was small like a parakeet, but in the world of casinos, at least in Nevada during it's hey days, it was an 800 pound gorilla. It's reputation, positive or negative depending on how you viewed it, but mostly positive, carried it's rep way ahead of itself.

Me, I loved the place. Except for maybe wanting more space physically because the El Rey was a little on the small side, it was everything a casino should be. Noisy, low ceilings, smoke, friendly atmosphere with a slight need to watch your step, satisfying pay offs, and an ever present bevy of hostesses. It was also hard to squeeze through making it perfect for pickpockets and their like, dark, and owned and operated by a person who was a relatively cool dude. Pickpockets or similar preying types were not tolerated. If caught they could easily find themselves face down in the dirt someplace out of town with a broken leg or worse. Searchlight itself was a weird sort of a burg, a tiny little dump, sort of dead, but once you stepped into the El Rey it was another thing. Not so much wild west as much as a Terry and the Pirates type milieu, a milieu I've always been drawn to.

The first time I ever went to the El Rey was during the summer just before I started my second year in high school. Pancho Barnes, the famed aviatrix and stunt pilot, just had her notorious "Happy Bottom Riding Club," shut down by authorities through a series of unproven and unsubstantiated allegations. Her place was built right on the edge of Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of California. It featured a motel, an abundance of riding horses and thoroughbreds, a restaurant, three landing strips, a dance hall, gambling den, a world-famous bar which catered to military personnel from the nearby air base along with all of her Hollywood friends, and hostesses, lots and lots of hostesses. The ranch became famous for it's all night parties and high-flying lifestyle of her guests. Nailing up her place put a big hole in the type entertainment she provided in that part of the world for hundreds of miles around --- especially so the air base, re the following from the source so cited:

"In 1952, following a change of command at the air base, friction between Pancho and the base commander began to increase because of the number of flights in and out of the Club's landing strip and what the commander called an incroachment into the base's airspace. When the government attempted to buy her property allegedly to expand the air base runways and Pancho refused, a series of unproven allegations surfaced that the Happy Bottom Riding Club was, among other things, a brothel. The Air Force slapped an off limits on the ranch, effectively banning servicemen from going to the club. Falling on hard times and basically deserted when the government moved to appropriate the ranch, Pancho sued. Then, on November 13, 1953, shortly after she beat the government and won the lawsuit, the ranch, under very, very suspicious circumstances, burnt to the ground, some even say, although it was never proven, from a possible strike from the air."

SOURCE: The Stepmother. See Footnote [5] this page.

It was just after the 1952 Air Force off limits when my Stepmother, or ex-stepmother as the case may be as she and my dad had only recently divorced, stepped in. My dad and she had gone to Mexico and South America for two years and during that time their marriage deteriorated to such a point it couldn't be repaired. As for the stepping in part, in that my stepmother had only just returned from a two year absence she was looking to reestablish herself. When the Air Force placed the off limits decree on the Club, Pancho, hearing my stepmother had returned and knowing both her and her reputation contacted her.

My stepmother had a California liquor licence and owned several bars in the general Los Angeles area. Pancho, as a friend from their old Laguna Beach days, in a casual conversation with my ex-stepmother, who supplied hostesses for the club on and off over time, suggested she open a facility similar to Pancho's now, or soon to be, defunct Club --- only in a location far enough from the air base that they could not mess with it, but still close enough that it was easily accessible --- AND with NO known or on the surface affliation or ties with Pancho. So she did, opening the closest bar in those days to the air base south gate, somewhat east and south of Pancho's old place, duplicating almost all of the same amenities and wide open services except for an airstrip. The following is what I have written about her "ranch" and my affiliation with it:

"Even though she and my dad were no longer married I spent a good part of every summer while I was in high school on one property or the other she owned in the Mojave, most usually the one not far from Piute Butte. The short time I was there during the summer prior to high school, following the Tehachapi quake but before going to my uncle's in Santa Fe, she had only just bought the property or was in the process of buying it. At that time it was pretty much a run down former attempt at a dude ranch. One year later, during my first full summer there, what she called a 'ranch' --- even though as a ranch it was a little on the sparse side in what I would call standard ranch fare --- had been completely rebuilt and refurbished with a rather long fully stocked bar, food service facilities, swimming pool, dance hall, live entertainment, along with rodeos and boxing matches on the weekends. It also had at least two dozen one-armed-bandit slot machines in a secret hidden room, plus like I like to say, a flock of ever present hostesses --- several of whom took me under their wing and one or two that may have been slightly more friendly than they should have been considering my young age, the youngest at the time at the very least being six years older than me."

It was during that period of time, i.e., while staying on my stepmother's ranch for the summer just before I started my second year of high school, that is, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, that I went to the El Rey Club for the first time. My stepmother had gone there to see the owner Willie Martello, who she knew in some fashion, and I went along. After a brief introduction, Martello set me up to have probably one of the best cheeseburgers I've ever eaten, while he and my stepmother receded to an area in the casino to talk where I couldn't go, me being too young and all.

Part way into my cheeseburger a really sharp looking well made-up dish of a babe maybe 25 years old or so, being hard to judge the teenager I was but loving the cleavage all over, stepped up to the table and without even saying a word pulled out a chair and sat down. She lit a cigarette turning her head upwards and in profile blowing the smoke toward the ceiling then turned towards me jerking her head almost like a mechanical robot or the bride of Frankenstein, asked how it was I knew the woman I came in with. When I told her she was my stepmother she seemed surprised, blurting out a loud laugh with overtones of being almost startled than anything, saying in a mockingly-sad way, "You poor boy."

Before I had a chance to push her face into the table she asked me what she was really interested in, why was my stepmother at the El Rey and why was she and Martello meeting. I shrugged my shoulders like I didn't know, mainly because I didn't know. Starting to get up she turned and told me she just wondered because at one time she worked for a friend of my stepmother's, a woman named Brenda Allen. When I told her I knew Allen she sat back down like we were long lost buddies wondering how I, the young boy that I was, would be in such a position that I would know Brenda Allen. Before I had a chance to respond in any depth my stepmother returned. When she saw me chit-chatting with the lady she didn't seem very happy, asking the woman just what exactly the two of us were talking about and why. With that the woman, the two of them seemingly knowing each other in an adversarial fashion, got up and said, "Fuck you Queenie, you don't mean shit around here!" while at the same time throwing the contents of a half empty glass of ice water in her direction, albeit totally missing. When it appeared the woman was about to lunge toward my stepmother following the water mishap, Martello, seeing my stepmother was pulling a nickel plated .25 semi-automatic Baby Browning out of her purse and with me ducking for cover, maintained the distance between the two by slightly nudging my stepmother around before she got close enough for contact, saying he would take care of it.

With that, Martello pushed the pistol back into my stepmother's purse and hustled us both out of the club. He had a driver take the two of us and our pilot, who had been playing blackjack in the casino, back to the airport about two miles south of town. Waiting on the tarmac was the twin engine Beechcraft Queen Air we flew up in. However, instead of leaving like I thought we would, we just waited.[1]

Unknown to both Martello and me my stepmother had reserved a room, and rather than me going back with her like the two of us may have surmised, I was going to spend the night at the El Rey. At first, as my stepmother told me some years later, the lady at the registration desk said there were no rooms, saying the place was sold out --- which was easy enough to do since the dump only had six or eight rooms, ten at the most. My stepmother quietly slipped a hundred dollar bill on the counter, then a second, then a third, but with no sign of a response forthcoming even after the third, my stepmother started gathering up the bills. With that the lady put her hand on top of my stepmother's hand saying she thought she may have a room after all, a guy just called in saying his car broke down out in the middle of the desert and he didn't think he could make it by check in.

After arrival at the airfield, the reason we were waiting rather than leaving, although I didn't know anything about the rooms at the time, was because my stepmother's ranch foreman Leo was on his way to Searchlight by vehicle. The idea was for he and I to camp out overnight in the desert then do some kind of an exploration type surprise the next day that Leo and my stepmother had put together for me.

As I was waiting, rather than sitting in the plane I starting wandering around the edges of the airstrip searching for lizards and stuff, and while I did my stepmother joined me. As usual for her she was dressed totally inappropriate for such happenings, having on high heels, more-or-less a matching suit like outfit and a little hat she kept having to hold on to because of the wind. But she was game and as I viewed it, true or not, she was more than willing to participate in such things with me as long as it was just the two of us and didn't diminish her facade in the eyes of others.

While we were exploring she told me how sad she was that she and my father had to go their separate ways but how much she had so enjoyed my brothers and me in her life those few years, especially so me. She was amazed that I had gone from a boy that continually ran away from home to someone who at least when I was under her custody, stayed and seemed so appreciative of it, even to the point of coming back on my own accord like I had done for the summer. She also liked the fact, although she wasn't advocating it, how I had sought her out specifically when I had run away on a previous occasion a few years earlier.

I reminded her that as it was, just before she left for South America, she had written a letter that was responsible for me getting a really good part-time after school job, and it was money from that job that helped finance my bus ticket and finding her that summer. The letter was addressed to a man named Russ Miller, the owner of the Normandie Club, one of six legal poker casinos in the city where I was living at the time, with those six being practically the only legal poker clubs in the whole state. After giving the letter to Miller I told him I was looking for some kind of regular after school or weekend work. He asked what grade I was in and stretching the truth a bit I told him I went to Gardena High. He said come back in a couple of days and ask for Rick. Which is what I did, starting work that week.

While my stepmother and I were still out exploring Leo arrived at the airfield, having driven all the way from south of Edwards Air Force Base in California to Searchlight in the ranch pick-up truck. Seeing him drive up on the tarmac I thought at least he wasn't driving the open top jeep --- which he and I had done a month or so earlier trying to keep up with a Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern locomotive going almost 90 miles per hour out across raw desert land headed westbound between Ludlow and Barstow.[2] When Leo drove onto the airfield I could immediately see he was traveling with another man, of which I would have no reason to believe why he should be. The man oddly enough, turned out to be a Chief Petty Officer I knew from China Lake Naval Air Station that hung around my mom's bar on the ranch.

As soon as Leo and the Chief arrived and my Stepmother and Leo talked in private for few minutes, she handed Leo the keys to our room back at the El Rey then boarded the Beechcraft headed back towards California. Leo, the Chief and I, with me riding in the back of the truck, headed toward the El Rey for dinner and a nights sleep. Back in the motel room after dinner the Chief showed me a number of trinkets and things like ID cards and stuff related to a German submarine crew, or at least prison camp internees he had somehow, explaining each item one by one as he went through them. The next morning, and the real reason my stepmother had Leo and the Chief come up to Searchlight, they took me across the desert to a location probably not even 20 miles away along the Colorado River to see where, in late 1944 a German U-boat was found and how the military went about hauling it out and taking it back to Muroc Dry Lake. Now, other than me staying at the El Rey that night to go see the submarine location the next day and the timing of the jeep ride chasing the 4-8-4 out across the desert that summer, neither are El Rey stories per se,' both being stand alone stories of their own. However, for those of you who may be interested in following up on either story in depth, they can be found in full by going to the following links:

The last time I was at the El Rey was the year before I was drafted. Several years had gone by and Uncle Sam was breathing more and more down my neck. I remember my visit specifically. It was May 1st, the day after the final weekend in April, 1961. I had gone to Las Vegas for the SCCA road races at McCarran Field staying in comped rooms at the Freemont Hotel under invite of a really good friend of mine in those days, master Ferrari and Maserati mechanic Joe Landaker, now deceased. When the race weekend was over I took in Hoover Dam then drove down to Searchlight thinking I might take in a little gambling and maybe even partake in a few extra curricular activities on the side. Nine months later, on January 22, 1962, a few months before I was drafted, the El Rey Club burned to the ground, destroyed by a raging fire, leaving nothing but a tangled mess of former gambling machines, melted coins, burnt up paper money, heat shattered liquor bottles, and one time wooden framing turned to charcoal.

Navigating through the casino the day I was there in 1961, in an attempt to find a lucky machine, I bumped into the club's owner Willie Martello and introduced myself. He told me he remembered well the day my "mom" and I was there, turning to friend with him saying, "She pulled a fuckin' .45 out of her purse and pointed it at one of Daisy Mae's girls. I thought she was going to blow the shit out of her, the place, and everybody in it," my stepmother's pistol having somehow mysteriously morphed from a .25, which is barely even a gun, to being a .45, which is like a small cannon at close range. We talked a few minutes, shook hands, and jokingly as he walked away he asked if I was carrying any kind of a firearm. When I told him no he said as far as he was concerned it was all in the past, no harm, no foul. As soon as Martello left and I sat down to try and win a fortune than some heavyweight stepped up showing me he had a pistol shoved in his belt and wanting to know what my connection was with Martello, saying we seemed awful of chummy for a guy just passing through. After a brief explanation the man left. Within a few minutes he was back, and calling him by his mob name told me that Johnny Roselli, who I knew through my stepmother and who happened to be a big time major mover in the mob in Las Vegas, wanted to talk with me on the phone. Using a pay phone from a bank of pay phones in some dark hall in the back Roselli, who I had seen in Vegas only a few days before, asked the same thing as the man, although wanting a clarification if I was using his name, i.e., Roselli's, in any fashion in any dealings with Martello. I ensured him I wasn't, saying I had no dealings with Martello, it was strictly a friendly visit while informing Roselli the background story between Martello, my stepmother and me. I added as far as I knew Martello didn't even know I knew him. With that Roselli said, "He knows." Roselli told me he wanted me to distanced myself from Martello before it gets dark that day, permanently dark. Then, as requested, I handed the phone back to the man. After a couple of quick words over a couple of quick seconds the man hung up telling me that Roselli said to give his best to my mom. Knowing everything was cool between us with that remark I left that instant and never went back.[3]

As I look back now I can see where I should have done things differently. Initially, to Roselli, my actions had all the makings of a man who may have gone behind his back or over his head. Talking with me on the phone, right away he could see, although I had been "around" for years, I wasn't a person fully versed in all the subtle intricacies. He still told me to leave before it got dark, permanently dark. Roselli, not a man to apologize and running on gut instincts, made his comment to his henchman about my mom to ensure everything had eased into an OK mode. Again, I left that instant and never went back.

When I was leaving the El Rey Club the same man that questioned me about Martello a few minutes earlier in the casino, blocked me from backing out my car with his car, all the while waving something in the air and yelling that he had something for me. When I got out to see what the fuss was all about he handed me an already opened envelope addressed to Roselli. Inside was an 8X11 white sheet of paper that had only a small few line typed note in the center asking Roselli if he knew how to contact me and a business card of a L.A. lawyer that had "Call me. Brenda" written on the back. Roselli had sent his gorilla to stop me, not catching me until reaching the El Rey Club. My meeting with Martello at first took precedence over the note.[4]

In several places throughout my writings I make references to the fact that my stepmother on occasion did in some fashion "provided hostesses" here and there for a number of reasons under a number of circumstances, but in most cases I have done so without further elaboration. A good example is below, an occurrence that happened well before I was even born, when my dad met for the very first time the woman that would eventually become my stepmother. My dad helped cover for her in an incident that involved law enforcement officials, in turn allowing her to dissolve anonymously into a crowd without being recognized or questioned, with the following results:

"A male driver came around and opened the door for her. She thanked my dad for the help, handing him a card and telling him the two women were 'hostesses' she provided for Bruneman at his bar, the Surf Club. She also told my dad, in so many words, that in appreciation for his help she could arrange for some fun times if he was interested."

In the above main text I mentioned that my stepmother was known on occasion, if need be, to arrange for hostesses for Pancho's "Happy Bottom Riding Club." As well, as found in the Hoover Dam link above, I write in a couple of places of interactions I had with some of the hostesses on her own place after Pancho had to shut hers down. I only bring it up because my stepmother's business with Martello back in 1953 circulated around just such a subject.

In writing about the movie and TV actress Phyllis Davis and the two of us being in Thailand together, I make reference to that same city, Mong La. I visited Mong La along the Chinese Myanmar border, comparing it to the wretchedness of the Star Wars city of Mos Eisley. I do so by including a section on her page titled MONG LA: Mos Eisley Spaceport or Mayberry, R.F.D.?. That same section also shows up on my Khun Sa page. Although I don't give specific dates as to when the events in the section actually occurred, it is implied quite clearly that they happened after Hurricane Ike, i.e., September 1, 2008 - September 15, 2008, but before Ms Davis' death September 27, 2013, many years after the mid-60s encounters between Khun Sa and myself. In the section I write:

"Obi-Wan Kenobi warned Luke Skywalker that he'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in the whole galaxy than Mos Eisley spaceport."

Then I write that I guess neither of them ever heard of Mong La. Later, after leaving Mong La I go on to say:

"Not long after that we were in Panghsang with me introducing myself to Wei Hsueh-kang. He asked if I had the 'item.' I opened my phone and handed him the SIM card. He praised me for a job well done, saying everything he heard about me was true. Then he asked how it was I knew Khun Sa. I quickly explained to him the whole story saying I felt he was instrumental in saving my life."

Wei Hsueh-kang is probably the most notorious Southeast Asian warlord and drug kingpin around, with a $2M dollar FBI bounty on his head. Yet I sat there on a veranda with him along the Chinese-Burma border sipping drinks together. Next thing I know I am at the 140-million-baht Casino Club operating under the flagship of the Myawaddy Riverside Resort Complex on the Thai-Burma border meeting with Khun Sa's son.

In Chicago I boarded the premier all Pullman first class passenger train to Los Angeles, the Number 19 Santa Fe Chief. Toward midnight of July 3, 1944, between Flagstaff, Arizona and Williams, on a high speed downhill run and behind schedule, the Chief's locomotive, a powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern with 80 inch drive wheels and clocking out at over 90 miles per hour, hit a marked 55 mph speed limit curve, with the locomotive, bearing the Santa Fe identification #3774, derailing and sliding in the dirt on it's side off the tracks for nearly the length of two football fields before coming to a stop. The rest of the 14 car train ended up in various stages of derailment and wreckage on and off the track, some cars remaining upright with two actually staying on the tracks undamaged. The fireman and three passengers were killed. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer, with me being one of the passengers escaping unharmed.

Nine years later, in July of 1953, during the exact same summer I was on the ranch and I flew to the El Rey Club, my Uncle, who lived in Santa Fe, called my stepmother to tell her he had been in Las Vegas, New Mexico, not far from Santa Fe, a few hours before sunset, and saw what he called a highly unusual set of circumstances.

What he observed was a steam locomotive, not diesel during a time when most of the steam locomotives had been sidelined, go through town headed west pulling a special Boy Scout train on its way to Santa Ana, California for the Boy Scout Jamboree. What made what he saw so unusual was that the locomotive doing the pulling was nothing less than the #3774, a locomotive that most would have figured had been put out of business. He didn't know if it was going to be the motive power all the way through to the Los Angeles area or not, but even if not it should be going at least to Barstow and possibly down into the Cajon Pass sometime the next day.

My stepmother, knowing the impact the #3774 had on my life, and all excited, immediately dispatched both the ranch foreman and me in a jeep out across the desert toward Barstow to try and catch it. We reached Barstow before the train, so we headed out on Route 66 to try and intercept the train as far east as we could and follow it back. Which we did. Cutting across the desert in the jeep from 66 to the AT&SF mainline, then racing the locomotive parallel side-by-side the best we could using the barely discernible rock strewn and no bridges service road along side the tracks into Barstow is a ride I'll never forget.

When I was in Vegas for the race weekend that April I looked up Roselli to thank him for a favor he had done recently for my long by then ex-stepmother, a favor I had put into place through him on her behalf. The meeting between the two of us took place in a small back room behind the gift shop in the New Frontier Hotel, where I guess, he apparently held court on occasion. For the reasons related to that meeting see:

When our meeting was over, just as I was leaving a very good looking well dressed clean shaven man was entering, with the two of us having to circle out of each others way as he was going in, neither of us realizing the other was there at first. As we passed in the narrow space of the doorway we made very strong close eye contact and even though I felt I should know him I didn't ... nor did I recognize him. Ten years later I was to meet the same man again under much different circumstances and although I didn't recall him initially as being the same man I squeezed by behind the New Frontier gift shop, after some time together he remembered me. When he mentioned the two of us barely getting by each other that night going through the door of the gift shop, in an instant the whole scene came flooding back in.

The man I squeezed by and then met ten years later turned out to be Dan Rowan of the Rowan and Martin comedy team. It seems those ten years before Rowan had developed what was said to have become a mutual infatuation between himself and Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, headliners in Vegas at the same time Rowan and Martin were headliners there. It also seems as well that at very same time a major heavyweight mover in the mob, Chicago boss Sam Giancana, had also developed an interest in McGuire. Rowan was told in so many words to put a lot of distance between himself and her, otherwise there would be consequences. If Rowan going into the room behind the gift shop was related to any of that I don't know, but the only man in the room that night other than a couple of Roselli henchmen was Roselli, the mob's main contact and leading figure in Vegas as well as Giancana's right hand man.